Cheat meals and weight loss

Don’t Call Them Cheat Meals

Every time I read or hear someone calling pizza/burgers/chips etc. “cheat meals”, I feel the necessity to give a speech about it.

I’ve been there. A dark place where eating pizza makes you feel bad, and for that reason decide to eat more “cheat meals”.

When you are trying to lose weight (mostly beginner), you will feel the pressure of stop eating sugar, stop eating pizza or any sort of takeaway, you will go out with friends and do not eat or enjoy because it is not a “cheat meal day”.

Or, even worse, you will eat what are you craving, then feel bad, and eat more and then ruin all your progress or starve yourself the next day in order to, somehow, “balance” the bad meal.

What if I told you you can have your pizza, your burger, or your sweet, and still losing weight? 

First of all, cheat meals do not exist! Yes, you read correctly. When calling any food cheat meal, automatically your mindset it as bad food. We do not want that; that’s a start point for a poor relationship with food.

Secondly, make sure you are mentally ready to accomplish your goal. If you are stressed at work, if you are not in your best moment, putting extra pressure on kcal tracking and exercising is not a good idea. You are going to end up, eating everything that appears in front of you. You need to be very clear and ready to do sacrifices. If you’re looking to lose weight, pizza is still an option, but let’s be smart.

Let me give you an example:

Mary has been trying to lose weight for over a year now. She has tried Slimmer world, detox, and herbalize. Of course, any of them work. She ends up eating more than she should after a period of time because of these “diets” putting too much pressure on what is bad or good food.  So, she contacts me, and after understanding where she is coming from, I introduced her to a new approach. We set the kcals she will be eating a day, she was familiar with kcal tracking, I did not tell her what to eat, only: Here is your number, we will review in a week to see how you feel!

During the first days, she was trying all her best to eat all “clean” and “good” food. But 4 days into kcal tracking she was craving everything again. Then, without me telling her anything, she decided to introduce a bag of sweets, crisps, and Mcdonalds, all of those fit in her kcal intake.

Weekly check-in came, we sat for a chat, and she was surprised that she lose some inches and had eaten what she wants. I asked her: what did you learn during this week? She said: I can enjoy what I like, obviously, I need to be smart, I can have pizza but that will set the kcal for the whole day, and probably be hungry between meals. I was so happy to hear that! After that, we set an off-track day (she loves going out with friends on Saturdays, sometimes, and the last thing I want is for her to feel the pressure of not eating). She learned that there is no good or bad food, just be smart!

Mary’s situation sounds familiar? Did you been in yo-yo dieting before? Let me help you stop that circle.

Alazfit